France opens Egyp­tAir crash in­quiry

The Paris prose­cu­tor’s of­fice has opened a man­slaugh­ter in­quiry into the May crash of an Egyp­tAir plane that killed 66 peo­ple, say­ing there is no ev­i­dence so far to link it to ter­ror­ism. Prose­cu­tor’s of­fice spokesman Agnes ThibaultLe­cuivre said the in­quiry was launched yes­ter­day as an ac­ci­dent investigation, not a ter­ror­ism investigation. She said au­thor­i­ties are “not at all” favour­ing the the­ory that the plane was brought down de­lib­er­ately. The de­ci­sion to open the investigation was based on ev­i­dence gath­ered so far, she said, with­out elab­o­rat­ing. The French-man­u­fac­tured plane, en route from Paris to Cairo, crashed in the Mediter­ranean on May 19. Search teams have re­cov­ered its two flight recorders, which have not yet been an­a­lysed. The rea­son for the crash re­mains un­clear.